At this moment, Google News has 2287 links to stories about the Oakland verdict, and at least a dozen of them are about riots, but the current New York Times front-page story was apparently filed for the print deadline and doesn’t have a word about any kind of unrest.
On the plus side for the Times, if they did have a paywall, fewer people would know that they’re still creating an online version of a printed newspaper.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Well um. Writing about the riots might offend the precious conservative reader base. Or something.
Man, the right side of the blogosphere is going to be arse-deep in toxic sludge for weeks. That and the smoke from burning dog whistles.
Maybe I’ll go to the beach.
And the fucking Sand-Box Recreation Society will be wielding their sticky GI Joe dolls to demonstrate exactly how this could happen to anyone.
Fuck.
El Cid
Until David Brooks has something to say about it, I don’t need to know.
Keith
Offider, I coulda sworn that was a cigarette I was smoking and not a joint. Fuckwad…
Captain Haddock
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Riot stories are usually gobbled up by conservatives as they see them (riots) as proof of their most racist beliefs. Sadly, photos of young men looting sneaker stores always get the most attention.
stuckinred
Wait a minute, the complaint is that the Times didn’t have information about violence that took place after the story was written? You better check back in yesterday’s thread and read all the people talking about how either there would be no violence or it would be “outside agitators” and not Oakland folk.
Bill E Pilgrim
You know, too many of you riff raff have been reading my comments for free also. Well, the free ride is over. From this moment on my comments are pay only also. It’s corporate accounts for me. If you’re a corporation, you can sign up at the link.
mistermix
@stuckinred: The complaint is that the story should have been updated, or a new story written, when new events occurred.
Instead, it looks like the article they’re front paging is what went out in this morning’s Times, which was printed in the wee hours of the morning in the East.
Bill E Pilgrim
@stuckinred: Yes I think “after the story was written” is exactly the point. In a newspaper that’s what happens. The story is written, it gets put to bed, printed, and then doesn’t change.
This story is on a Web site, and it’s the current front page offering. In that case other things can happen, though whether the NYT actually grasps that concept is unclear, and sort of the point.
Napoleon
This is the only story that counts today.
Fleas correct the era
‘Course the caption for the lede photo in the first article returned by the Google search (Voice of America) indicates that Mehserle was tried in “the East Fork Justice Court in Minden, Nevada.”
I’m not sure which approach works best: Don’t Say Anything or Don’t Know Which State Is California?
KCinDC
@kommrade reproductive vigor, I don’t think pandering to conservatives will work as an explanation for this one. Conservatives love riot stories. I’d expect Fox News is even covering riots that didn’t actually happen.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Fleas correct the era:
I think that caption is correct, that’s where he was first arrested, being where they found him. It says “appears in court” there but it isn’t where he was tried.
BTW I think there’s a bug in your handle.
sparky
@mistermix:
i can’t believe i have to be in the position of defending the NYT but so be it.
what’s your complaint, exactly?
–that the NYT isn’t tweeting quickly enough?
–that their writers need to be kept awake at all times?
–that they ought to breathlessly report everything moment by moment ala Fox?
the NYT is still a newspaper, not a network much less google. when the NYT pretends to be Reuters or AP, that is, a news service, compare them then. in the meantime how about building a different strawman?
elmo
@Keith:
It’s good to be the cop. Mistakes always work out in your favor.
Arrestee pulls out his wallet, and you mistake it for a gun in his hand? Bang, he’s dead, and you’re not a murderer.
You yourself pull out a gun, and mistake it for a tazer? Bang, he’s dead, and you’re not a murderer.
Because, you know, it’s so hard to tell the difference between wallets and guns, cell phones and guns, tazers and guns, that only the innocent civilian can be expected to pay the price for those mistakes. Holding the trained professional accountable? That’s crazy talk.
John Bird
Hell, I’d riot too. Twenty years would be too short for a cop who managed to shoot an unarmed, restrained suspect.
This is one of those few times in criminal justice where the penalty can actually act effectively as a deterrent – when it’s handed down to show law enforcement officers that theirs is a higher responsibility of life and death, because of the leeway afforded them in the use of lethal force.
This sentence is simply an affirmation of the bizarre philosophy in the United States that when we give people the ability to shoot to kill, to destroy lives and end jobs, and to break up families, somehow their wrongdoing should be exempt because their training and oath places them on a mystical higher plane, assumed to be free of corruption and criminal incompetence.
Involuntary manslaughter should not even have been considered seriously in this situation.
celticdragonchick
@sparky:
I have to agree with you. There are plenty of things to complain about wrt the NYT…but this story is not one of them.
Mnemosyne
Okay, I keep hearing people talking about these scary scary “riots” in Oakland and they sound about on the level of what happened in LA when the Lakers won the championship. What’s with the hysteria?
I was here in LA in 1992. Now that was an actual fucking riot, not a few people throwing bottles and setting trash cans on fire.
Bill Section 147
stuckinred you win. Pat yourself on the back. w00t!
Actually I think the thread yesterday was people hoping that there would be no violence – not sure that there would be no violence. And I think that the violence and looting was opportunists rather than the people who gathered for the vigil and to protest. I am going to Oakland tonight so I will get to see the rioting first hand.
I have only been in one riot. Police surrounded a couple hundred young people on a hill at the state fair (many of them were smoking pot) and they “failed to disperse” fast enough so they began firing tear gas into the crowd. If you have ever seen a crowd get gassed you won’t be surprised that most of them begin to run around wildly and did not look where they are going. And it won’t surprise you that the tear gas went over the whole crowded area – not just the kids on the hill. People were knocking over people and running into police officers with riot shields and clubs. The nightly news featured the “Youth Riot” with footage of wild-eyed kids attacking the police. The newspaper articles the next day were full of how out of control youth was going wild.
Bill E Pilgrim
@sparky: Oh I quite agree, the newspaper should put on the Web site exactly what’s in the traditional print newspaper and not update it until the print edition is printed again. It’s not like it’s a new technology or delivery format or something, it’s just a printed newspaper viewed with another kind of gadget. Of some sort.
Bill Section 147
@Mnemosyne: I had a similar thought when I heard RIOT. The New York Draft Riot, now that was a riot. The British were probably scratching their head when news of the Boston Massacre was published. Massacre? The Boston press should drop by Birmingham and see how we handle the thugs back home.
It is unfortunate that there was any violence at all but for the right wing it is all the proof they need that the thugocracy is in power. I read somewhere that the Justice Dept. was going to look into the trial. Sadly, my first thought was that will just be proof that Obama has ‘their’ back.
joeyess
I wonder: if the officer had been in a gun battle that night with those fellas, would his first reaction have been to mistakenly pull out his taser?
fucen tarmal
here is the thing, when the police gear up for a riot, there damn sure better be a riot. having witnessed the g-20 here last september, where mostly the protests were tame by comparison, and certainly not on the order of expectation, nor enough to justify the show of force, the “rioting” that took place seemed very suspiciously like starting shit so we can stop it, because we don’t want to have gotten all dressed up for nothing.
John Bird
@Bill Section 147:
I’m pretty sure you’re right. The Justice Department, eager to prove that the White House is not a 24/7 Leonard Bernstein Black Panther party, will give this the rubber stamp, if it goes up for review at all. Support our Cops, or whatever.
Maybe they’ll even borrow the stamp Israel uses for IDF “investigations”.
elmo
@joeyess:
Oh, excellent, excellent point.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@KCinDC: Good point. Must be afraid they’ll get all hot n’ bothered. That would be dangerous in this weather.
Grisha
Ironically, the NYT article sounds like the most accurate one. There weren’t any riots, just a few idiots breaking into a Foot Locker.
stuckinred
@Bill Section 147: Not sure what I won?
James Gary
Ironically, the NYT article sounds like the most accurate one. There weren’t any riots, just a few idiots breaking into a Foot Locker.
Yes. Nothing about the riots on the BBC World Service or the last three top-of-the-hour NPR news updates either, and only a brief mention of the entire story on “Morning Edition.” I guess all the NPR and BBC reporters had to file for the print deadline as well, or something like that.
Whatever. I’m sure it must be another example of how OLD MEDIA IS TEH DEAD, rather than an example of there not being much of a story to actually cover.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Grisha:
Thanks so much for settling that for us. I’m on my way to Oakland now, so I’ll let all the other business owners whose property was trashed know that.
cyntax
One addendum for John’s earlier post: Mehserle is looking at 5-14 years (due to the enhancement for use of a weapon), not 4 years.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@James Gary:
Why does it have to be one or the other? This is legitimately a big story here, but I can’t see why NPR or other national media – let alone the BBC – should be expected to carry up-to-the-minute, full coverage of what is essentially local news. I’d much rather they spent their resources looking into national/international stories the local media can’t cover. The Mehserle trial raised larger issues about the police, race, and justice that merit wider coverage and debate, but the aftermath is hardly on the same level.
On the other hand, implying that “if the Beeb didn’t cover it, it didn’t happen” is absurd.
DougJ
@El Cid:
Ha.
4jkb4ia
The NYT was very slow on the story to the extent of not posting about the verdict when it happened. This is surprising for a paper which has started a special edition in San Francisco. Perhaps it is steering people to that edition of the paper.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
You should probably be more pissed off at the out-of-towners who descended on your city to cause trouble than at your local residents:
Yay, anarcho-kiddies! You sure showed The Man by trashing innocent people’s businesses!
Here in LA, the protest was so dull the cops left early.
Bill Section 147
@stuckinred: The internets. And there is nothing better.
Smudgemo
I wonder if the Pizza Man next to the Footlocker got trashed, too. I guess I’ll never know as my company left downtown for the sterile and hideous suburbs some months ago. I don’t suppose anybody will take note of police reports stating a lot of this was caused by out of town anarchists.